Century Center
Details
A CLOSED MALL IS OPENED BACK UP TO DOWNTOWN.
PROJECT TYPE
Adaptive Reuse / Mixed-Use Development
LOCATION
Oklahoma City, OK
SIZE
275,000 SF
CLIENT
Hurst Holdings
CONTRACTOR
Timberlake Construction
completed
2015
Century Center opened in the 1970s as a downtown shopping destination, then spent years as 95,000 square feet of mostly empty retail. Gardner Studio developed a series of strategies to make the complex useful again, adapting a closed mall for offices, broadcast, food, fitness, and other large tenants.
The biggest move was also the most direct: remove the precast concrete panels that sealed the building off from the street and daylight. A new steel exoskeleton replaced the seismic bracing lost with those panels, while new storefronts, structural modifications, and site improvements reconnected the building to downtown. The project became a long-running exercise in flexible reuse rather than a single fixed fit-out.
